


War of the Coprophages

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [61]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cockroaches, F/M, Gen, Introspection, MSR, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:56:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4855490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	War of the Coprophages

_“Mulder, what’s going on?!”_  
“Gotta go.”  
“Mulder? Mulder!” 

She replayed the last thirty seconds of their phone call over and over in her mind, trying to wring every clue she could out of his tone and word choice.

He was frantic, afraid, surrounded by cockroaches, and then… calm. The phone hadn’t been ripped away. He hadn’t ended the call shouting her name. Nor had his last words been uttered in a harsh whisper, as if he’d been confronted with the sudden need to hide. It was as if the threat had suddenly vanished.

Which was a good thing, right?

It meant that he was probably okay, that he would probably call back soon. After all, he’d been calling her every few hours all day long. There was no reason to think that trend wouldn’t continue.

She turned back to the computer, intent on continuing her research so she might have more information for Mulder when he called again. Returning to her earlier line of investigation, she began to see what she could find out about species of cockroach that were exclusively found elsewhere in the world, looking for any mentions of swarming behavior or predation. It would not have been the most riveting subject of study under normal circumstances, however, and the longer she went without hearing back from her partner, the more her attention drifted to the phone sitting silently on the desk.

Eventually, she abandoned the computer entirely and just sat there, staring.

After what must surely have been an hour of waiting, she glanced at the clock to see that… ten minutes had passed since they’d spoken. How in the world had it only been ten minutes?

“Oh, to hell with it,” she said at last, grabbing the phone and hitting speed dial.

It rang through, and she held her breath.

“ _Not now_ ,” was all he said before hanging up on her again.

Mouth agape, she listened to the dial tone for a full twenty seconds before closing the connection on her end. What in the hell was going on up there? That had sounded an _awful_ lot like a brush-off… 

She looked at the ice cream melting in the carton and sighed before standing to put it back in the freezer. Queequeg trotted into the kitchen from wherever he’d been laying, his little dog nails click-clacking on the linoleum. He whined.

“Oh, all right, one more.” She shook a treat out of the box on the counter and tossed it on the floor. “That’s the last one for tonight, you got it?”

He crunched the treat and looked expectantly at her, whining again. She shook her head.

“Sorry, boy. You’re just going to have to wait. Believe me,” she added wryly, “I’m just as big a fan of waiting as you are.”

Returning to the desk, where her computer displayed a grid of photographs of Malaysian and Indonesian cockroaches, she reached over to shut off the monitor, then picked up the phone and carried it with her to the couch. Aiming for a distraction, she made it through another chapter of her book before her eyelids began to droop, and she decided it was probably a poor idea to fall asleep there, all crumpled up. 

Taking the phone with her, just in case Mulder finished with whatever he was up to and deigned to call her back, she got herself ready for bed. There was no point in losing sleep; he had absolutely sounded like he wasn’t in any danger. Still, if she kept the phone beside her anyway, it would wake her up if and when it got around to ringing.


End file.
